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If you design a multi-function alarm clock that has complicated software ...
First, you test the software ...
Then you put in a reset switch just in case it goes wrong.
You do NOT put in a recessed reset switch that does not actually work.
You certainly do NOT put in a recessed reset switch that, far from actually resetting the device, makes it go crazy and make random sickening beeping noises while flashing the LCD on and off in random psychedelic sequence. No button turns this off, nor does hitting the device on the table.
You do NOT put a weird screw on the back that is impossible to open without finding one of those microscopic philips heads for fixing spectacles. Until you find one there is no way to stop the alarm clock from making noises comparable to scraping fingernails over a blackboard, only worse.
You do NOT make the only option for resetting the reset switch to open that screw and remove the battery.
You do NOT make the battery mount so poor that the moment you start to screw the battery screw back in, the battery loses its connection and the whole thing switches off. When you open it again to see what happened, the battery falls out and disappears down the radiator somewhere.
The moral of this story is: do not bother with freebie gifts from the 54th ICASM, Bangalore, India, 2006.
Why did I post that? I felt like grumbling. 
David
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David, I'm sure that Bangalore, India produces some wonderful, fully functioning alarm clocks. They ship them all over the world. They save the special ones just to ship to the UK!
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
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We all have to grumble about something and its good to get it out in the open. Such is the curse of modern day electonics. Like your new pic.
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
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... I have just noticed that the door to the kitchen here in the student hall of residence has a squeak that sound exactly like the first three notes of the flute introduction to the fugue at the end of Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. It is quite uncanny -- you'd never have thought that a door could have not just a musical but a recognisable squeak!
How's that for randomness?
David
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Wouldn't it be an idea to try to make it squeak at least a couple of bars of that music, by manipulating the hinges and adjusting the way the door touches the frame? Or would that interfer too much with the door's own personality? Maybe you should ask it first?
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Eventually it started wailing forever and I couldn't be bothered to keep taking the back off, so I dropped it in a sink of water.
That shut it up!
David
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Just wait until it dries out in the trash and starts wailing again 
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
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I left it in the sink for an hour to get thoroughly soaked. Then I took it apart, dried it with kitchen paper, and plugged all the electronics back together externally, without bothering with the plastic case.
Now it's an LCD hanging off a battery and a piece of silicon. I disconnected the speaker, but otherwise it seems to be working fine, albeit in a highly undressed state. It even seems to keep good time!
David
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for some reason, this thread just made me laugh...
David, you really are quite an amazing person! *hugs*
Aden
Odi et amo: quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, set fieri sentio et excrucior
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jack
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Likes it here |
Location: England
Registered: September 2006
Messages: 304
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David,
would you like me to buy you a new one, as i know times can be hard.
You could make a silent film about crap electronic clocks.
i am only having a small joke.
life is to enjoy.
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